


She Who Believeth In Me

by captainkilly



Series: all the devils [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mild Language, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Civil War (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 12:44:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6375223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainkilly/pseuds/captainkilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her brightness touches everything he lays eyes on.</p><p>And he can't shake her no matter how hard he tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Who Believeth In Me

**Author's Note:**

> First fic I've written in a long, long time. This ship chewed me up and spat me back out into the trash.

He promises himself he's not going to watch her. That plan goes out the window the second he sees the name 'Karen Page' appear in the fucking Bulletin as a writer. It's a career change on her that he swears he could have predicted the minute he heard she'd been in his house. It's a good job for her in a bad city out for her blood, and she ain't exactly the quiet type. Her brightness touches everything he lays eyes on.

And he can't shake her no matter how hard he tries.

 _You're dead to me,_ she said. _You're dead you're dead you're dead._

He thought he was already gone, but it is no longer that easy. She makes it harder to believe his own death once her articles keep popping up. And, goddamn, he almost crashes the car he's driving in when he's listening to the always sensible Trish Walker on the radio and suddenly her voice is seeping through his speakers talking about the crime rate in this city. He swears to himself loudly the next week when he's about to shoot one of the cartel's last members and he hears her on the radio laughing in reply to something Walker said. He shoots the radio before he shoots the weeping criminal in front of him.

It takes him another two weeks before he decides that Walker and Page are the next best thing to have as allies. He starts sending her information he learned from the people he goes after. Starts asking criminals questions before he shoots them. He needs more stitches and ice for himself than before, but tells himself it's fucking worth it. He knows she acts on every tidbit he gives her. Cross-checks it against her own sources and runs with it in her articles. It makes her a pain in the ass for the people trying to use Hell's Kitchen as their own personal fucked-up playgrounds.

It makes her even more dangerous when she's in Walker's show explaining how it happens that a criminal can run the prison he's put into and how it is that even the Devil of Hell's Kitchen is a half-measure at best. There's a gap she leaves in her narrative that's big enough to fit him into perfectly. But he's dead to her. _Dead dead dead._ He thinks her newfound friendship with Walker prevents the other woman from asking about that live on air. He catches a few criminals plotting to go after the women. Dissuades them from that the only way he knows how.

He prays every night he's doing enough.

*****

The information packet he sends her about a month or two after he first heard her voice again is far bigger than the last few tidbits he sent out. He knows that Walker is about to kick the hornet's nest with the way she's been asking questions about a military program. So he copied all the notes and almost all the shit he has collected and sorted it in the way he knew would make most sense to her. Pictures before words. Altered documents side-by-side with the real ones. He's played this game of connect the dots with her before, back when he was about to go to prison. Back when she still thought she could save his ass.

He thinks she's got a 'saving people thing' that's bigger than any superhero's, but he doesn't tell her that in the note he sticks on the packet. He thinks she already knows, because she looked at him like he was the centre of the world in spite of all the shit he pulled. Once she clamps down on something, she doesn't let up. So he doesn't try to dissuade her from Kandahar. Doesn't try to omit any details that he can remember, though he sanitises both his language and the details of the kills wherever he can. He thinks she's got plenty of nightmares to ride out without anything getting added to it by his hand.

He wraps the packet in the blanket he's been sleeping in. It's so big that it can cover him entirely -- not a mean feat, as the wife would've joked -- and it's big enough to hold all the information he has for her without looking like it contains it at all. He gets a nice gift box from some stupid frilly store he saw her make a stop at once or twice. The box has tiny blue flowers all over it and a tiny card near its bow. He draws a tiny skull in it that he later regrets.

*****

He stops by her place about a week after sending the package. She leaves the curtains open in the evening, though her windows are firmly shut. (He knows this because, well, a man's gotta check.) He's almost hoping she's not alone and that she got either Walker or Nelson with her, but all he can see through the windows is her. There's a bottle of somethin' on the table and she's chugging it back like a pro. He sees her take picture after picture into her hands as she stands in the tiny space she calls a living room. He'd bet his life on those pictures being of the trail of bodies a project like Kandahar leaves behind. Not her first goddamn rodeo indeed.

He watches her fling the photographs down onto the table as the evening progresses. She looks tired even from the distance he has to her. He almost wills her to call Walker to talk things over because there is no way she's sleeping tonight without having talked with somebody about the shit she's seen. But she doesn't pick up the damn phone. Doesn't stop drinking, either. 

When she finally goes to bed, he has to turn and walk away. The last thing he sees is her unraveled form pick up the blanket he gave her. He sees her hold it to her face and wrap herself in it right before she draws the curtains shut against the world. Anyone else who'd be watching her would be disappointed at the abrupt end of contact. Not him. He feels like he's right there with her in the room. Like he's keeping her safe even when he ain't there to watch over her.

A voice deep inside him, slithering forth from a hidden place, tells him that's exactly what he wanted when he gave her this.

He tells it to shut up before he takes a fucking gun to it and blows it the hell away.

*****

The next time he sees her come home, her hair no longer trails behind her in the breeze. It almost looks like she took the scissors to it herself. Choppy ends curl against her jawline in a haphazard fashion. He almost smiles as he sees her rake her hand through her hair the way she always does. Some things don't change. 

What did change is the way she looks over her shoulder now. Holds her keys to her apartment the way he holds a knife. Spreads her feet further apart and moves like all her gestures fold and curl into and from her belly. For one moment, which he later dubs as "seriously insane", he wonders if Red taught her that much about a good fighting stance. But she has not met the lawyer or the Devil lately, and the way she squares her shoulders is the same way he tenses up before battle. 

He thinks the hair and the tension all have something to do with what was on the news. It bothers him that he can read her so well that one look at her now tells him all he needs to know about how the experience felt for her. He used to guess at her responses all the time. He remembers studying her in the dim light of imprisonment, venturing out on limbs in regards to how the courtroom must have felt to her like a boa constrictor about to squash its supper. But now, these days, all it takes is one headline about two journalists being subject to a drive-by shooting. All it takes is him listening to the shooter's drugged-up meanderings about how her hair had been soaked with Trish Walker's blood as she cradled the woman's body. He knows there are some things that can only be fixed by cutting other things away.

Media speculated that it had been the Punisher's work. She had clipped a frosty "this was not Frank Castle's doing" at the too-blonde too-thin too-ambitious reporter before rushing into Metro General. Before they had a chance to ponder her use of his given name, he changed their monologue about him entirely. He dragged his retribution for the shooting out onto the street for the world to see. He spelled her name in his mind with every punch that landed. He supposes the rest of Hell's Kitchen heard him roar her name in defense through the bodies he left on the police's doorstep. 

Both the Bulletin and Walker's radio station took great care to make him no more than a blip on the radar. Her earlier refusal to accept it may have been his work that landed Trish Walker in hospital took on an unfortunate new meaning. Other media have been speculating about the deaths that follow Karen Page's wake for the past two or three days now. He catches stray whispers on the street about the Punisher's response to the shooting, as though he is nothing but a watchdog set loose by a frail-looking woman who's almost single-handedly changing the dialogue about crime in Hell's Kitchen. 

He can't help but smile at that.

*****

He knew shit was going to hit the fan the minute he heard about the testimony she is said to give to the DA's office on two consecutive days. One of the other newspapers ran the story a few days ago. It felt like the headline was blinking neon colours of despair at him. " _Page vs Punisher_ ", they had stated, as if she has anything to do with the way he's ripped up the Italians trying to take root in the Irish's wake. As if she's gonna talk about him like he is a match for her. The rest of the world has no idea that Frank Castle would rather burn than be seen as her equal. She's too good for that shit. He'd rather have her spit his name out like he's still dead to her.

But he ain't dead yet, so here he sits. The rest of the article had detailed a timeframe for her statements as well as newfound speculations. He's been camped out in a van near the DA's building for the past three days because of that, obviously. Nobody gives an exact timeline unless they want somebody to come interrupt the shit out of that timeline. He saw the still-limping Trish Walker stake out the full environment of the building on the first day he got here. Witnessed her gesture wildly at some officers and yell about Karen's wellbeing the way any proper friend should, but the way neither Nelson or Murdock seemed to care any longer. Apparently, he is not the only one with misgivings about this publicity. He had half-hoped to be sent away with his van the next day when he showed up again in the exact same spot as the day before. Good security should've noticed. But they didn't notice, and so he's here again.

There are too many leaks in the system for him to trust her safety. He tells himself that's why he packed his best guns for the day and why one of them is resting on the front seat fully loaded. If word can get out about what she said in the privacy of the DA's own office, the way he heard she'd spoken about the Punisher's moral code yesterday, then something else can go down today too. He tries not to think about how many times she uttered his name in that statement she gave. Tries to shut out the tiny snippet of the monologue he heard on the radio. Her voice was practically singing in his ears as she said "Frank Castle is not just a murderer". He wonders how he's going to get through the day without feeling like his heart's going to leap out of his throat.

And then his heart stutters to a fucking halt as he catches her walk out the building. She is smiling tentatively at the people waiting outside. She's surrounded by a bunch of security and by the ever-present Trish Walker, of course, but his eyes aren't on them and they ain't really on her either anymore now that he sees the rest of the crowd. Sees _them_.

He is out of his van, weapon in hand, before he has any time to think about his own safety in all of this. 

He guns down the first, second, and third on the outskirts of the crowd. Killing shots one and all, because he doesn't have the time or patience to figure out who's fucking responsible for this. The crowd disperses faster than you can say one-two-three. Some scream at the sight of him or at the way he casually aims his own gun at number four who's just standing there looking like a total asshat with his AK-47. He makes a tsk-ing sound under his breath as he sees her security disperse at the sight of him. 

He is on her before she even has the time to register he is there at all. He cradles her to his chest the way he did once before, hand on her hair and all, and guns down numbers five and six that are coming up behind her in his line of sight. One of them had the audacity to raise his own weapon as if he was going to shoot. He feels her breath on his throat as she twists her head in an attempt to see what's going on, but he's going to be damned if he lets her see the worst of him once again. He tangles one hand firmly into her hair to stop her from moving. He doesn't have to question where numbers eight and nine are, as Trish Walker punches and kicks her way through those at his right side. The fighter's relish that's tangible on her face makes him reassess Walker's entire friendship with the woman who's now folded her hands into his bulletproof vest.

He finds himself barking an order at the nearest cop to "for the love of God, man, take those two living assholes into custody before I regret not shooting them and question them within an inch of their lives" now that the immediate danger is passing quick. He disentangles himself from her in an instant when he no longer hears the click of a gun's readiness. He's back on the street marching the hell toward his van before they even have a chance to register that, yes, it really was the Punisher shielding Karen Page from harm moments before. The last thing he knows before he speeds away is that she still smells like peaches and honey -- and somehow, that realisation kills him more than the fact that he almost lost her today.

*****

He sends her flowers when it becomes clear that his actions to save her life have turned her over to even bigger scrutiny. He's not sure how exactly flowers are going to help with anything, but it's what normal people do to apologise and he can't have her think that he wanted this for her. He toiled over the card he sent with one of the bouquets -- fuck that, he sent her half the shop while he was at it and doesn't regret it -- before settling on a "not sorry I saved you"-statement that's probably gonna make her set the flowers aflame with her rage. 

He tells himself it's the thought that counts.

He's not sure what to tell himself now that he is standing on the roof of the building opposite her apartment once again. He takes a big gulp of coffee and squints against the dark that seems to settle on this part of the city right before dawn. He hasn't seen her yet. Her place is darker than the night spread out before him. He almost laughs out loud at himself when he realises she could just as easily be staying with a friend now that he's turned her life upside-down.

The next gulp of coffee is spat back out onto the roof unceremoniously as the neat click of heels reaches his ears.

"I'm sorry, did I startle you?" She almost sounds amused at the way he's furiously wiping at his mouth like a five-year-old caught in the act of something they shouldn't be caught doing. His daughter used to look just as sheepish then as he probably does now. "You know, all that coffee is bad for you. Trish calls it 'artificial insomnia' and you do look like you haven't slept in days, so that's confirmation right there."

"Trish Walker also went on record as saying that she was quite sorry she didn't break that one guy's neck," he finally rumbled at her now that he had scraped together whatever was left of his dignity. "Honestly, ma'am, the friends you keep.."

".. say something about me." The tone of her voice brooks no argument there. "I should have figured that out sooner. It's all been so confusing, though, you know? Confusing but clear at the same time."

He glances at her now that she's walked up to stand beside him. Her hair's still short, but no longer as choppily cut as before. The ends of it are tucked behind her ears the way she puts it when she's in the middle of an article write-up. She still wears the same kind of clothes -- classy and all business -- but he feels like there is a new confidence in her stance as she turns to face him.

"I'm sorry about that shit," he tells her. Sweeps his arm in a wide gesture at what they can see of Hell's Kitchen tonight, as though he's apologising for the way this part of the city eats everybody up alive and spits them back out _wrong_. "I know it's been a mess."

She hums lightly at him. He's afraid to meet her eyes even in the dim light threatening to break through the dark. It's always been like she could see right through him, and he's quite sure he's an open book now. "The flowers told me about that apology of yours," she responds lightly, "and your information confirmed the rest. Thank you for the blanket, by the way." He nods in return. Surprised she even brought that one up. "The mess isn't your doing, though. It's the way this city works. Fisk is running his empire from his jail cell. Reporters get shot at because they reveal the truth. The Devil's--" her voice breaks momentarily, and he knows that she knows the Devil is the man she thought she loved, "the Devil's fighting a war he doesn't comprehend. And people like you, people like Jessica Jones and Luke Cage and all those others.. people like you are put on pedestals or burned like effigies. It never stops."

"They don't have shit to do with me."

"Yes, they do. If they didn't before, they do now." Her mouth curves down into a disapproving grimace. She looks older than her years, suddenly, and he worries that this job may be the nail in her coffin someday. Opens his mouth to tell her just that. It's just that the next words come out in a tumble of excitement twinged with all the research knowledge he knows she has. He can't find it in him to tell her to leave well enough alone. "Have you heard about the Superhuman Registration Act?"

He nods. "That's for the powered folks. Like Jones," he affirms. He doesn't mention Red, though the lawyer fits the bill too. "I heard your friend talk about it on the radio. It doesn't sound good for them, but it doesn't have shit to do with me."

"They're talking about expanding it to vigilantes. Want to make it so that everyone who is fully capable of taking the law into their own hands has somebody to answer to when they step out of line. You'll likely hear more about it in the next few weeks. It's going to start out with the big shots, you know, the ones actually laying waste to the city in alien warfare.. but it's not going to stop there."

"You're.. worried," he deduces. "It'll be okay. Someone's going to figure out that barking out orders isn't all that, and not all of those big heroes are going to take that scrutiny to begin with. It might die out before it even gets down to our level." He scoffs softly. Feels his hand make the same calming motion it always goes through right before a big fight. "If it does, I'd wager that even the biggest sanctimonious assholes are going to be siding with the Punisher side of things."

"You have to keep your head down," she warns him, then. Her voice is stern. Like glass that can't be broken any more, but can still cut you up and leave you hanging by a thread. "The amount of stuff we've uncovered.. Trish and I.. I know we got shot at because we were digging too deeply into it. It wasn't just the drug addict you killed afterward. Wasn't even the group you went after, though they got paid to take the hit on us." She looks at him intently. He finally glances at her longer than a moment. Meets her blue eyes head-on. "She used to know a soldier who was in a special program that was allied with the shit that went down in Kandahar. The stuff you gave us about that confirmed it. The one she knew took combat enhancers. There is a long story there that we are really going to need your help with, but you cannot dig this stuff up the way you've been digging up the Italians."

He'd gone perfectly still the moment she mentioned Kandahar. "Non-violent digging?" he inquired. "Not my style. But I can look over what you have." Gods, yes, he could look over all of that. He whistled softly under his breath. "It's all connected, isn't it?" he asked her moments later. "Everything is like a big part of this dominoes game and the chips are falling wherever the fuck they may.. You still got that .380 on you, right?" He's relieved to see her nod. "You hold onto that with both hands, okay? Don't you let go of something that can keep you alive."

Her hand's suddenly on his arm. "I'm already holding on to that," she says as she squeezes down so hard he swears her nails are imprinted on his flesh forever. "Stay safe. Remember what I said. I'll be in touch."

He can't even find the space inside himself to reply to her, so he just nods stupidly as the warmth of her small hand falls away from him again. He catches a brief hint of a smile curve at her lips before he loses sight of her. He hears her retreat rather than sees it. He'd rather not see her walk away from him again. Rather not have to shut the door on her one more time. He's poison to be around and he fucking knows it, knows it with every fibre of his being that's telling him to cling to her so tight she won't get to come up for air anymore. He's the abyss she gazed into and he supposes that he shouldn't be surprised that she is the undertow pulling him down into her now.

The click of her heels stops as she halts near the still open door. He turns to face her. "Frank?" Her voice is thin in the cold air, though she doesn't look frail against the early light of morning. Golden strands of new sunshine weave through her hair. A halo for better angels. She never halted at his name like that before. Never held it against the sun or the light breeze of any common spring day to be scrutinised as much as he now feels he is her subject.

"Ma'am?" he ventures cautiously, slipping into the tone of respect he can't help but lay at her feet. For her to trample and tread with those heels. There's an echo in his ears. _You're dead to me. You're dead to me._

_You're dead to me, Frank._

"I'm glad you're alive."

He blinks against the closing door.


End file.
